The Things That Roger Ailes Fears…

According to Tim Dickinson’s new piece in Rolling Stone, Fox honcho Roger Ailes lives in fear of “those gays”:

Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox‘s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing a demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having “bombproof glass” installed in the windows–even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. “They’ll be down there protesting,” Ailes said. “Those gays.”

And also Muslims (or janitors who look like they could be Muslim):

Ailes begins each workday buffered by the elaborate private security detail that News Corp. pays to usher him from his $1.6 million home in New Jersey to his office in Manhattan. (His country home–in the aptly named village of Garrison–is phalanxed by empty homes that Ailes bought up to create a wider security perimeter.) Traveling with the Chairman is like a scene straight out of 24. A friend recalls hitching a ride with Ailes after a power lunch: “We come out of the building and there’s an SUV filled with big guys, who jump out of the car when they see him. A cordon is formed around us. We’re ushered into the SUV, and we drive the few blocks to Fox‘s offices, where another set of guys come out of the building to receive ‘the package.’ The package is taken in, and I’m taken on to my destination.”

Ailes is certain that he’s a top target of Al-Qaeda terrorists. “You know, they’re coming to get me,” he tells friends. “I’m fully prepared. I’ve taken care of it.” (Ailes, who was once arrested for carrying an illegal handgun in Central Park, now carries a licensed weapon.)

Inside his blast-resistant office at Fox News headquarters, Ailes keeps a monitor on his desk that allows him to view any activity outside his closed door. Once, after observing a dark-skinned man in what Ailes perceived to be Muslim garb, he put Fox News on lockdown. “What the hell!” Ailes shouted. “This guy could be bombing me!” The suspected terrorist turned out to be a janitor. “Roger tore up the whole floor,” recalls a source close to Ailes. “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim–which is consistent with the ideology of his network.”

It’s a good thing he doesn’t run his cable news channel based on this sort of paranoia and fear-mongering.

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Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

Why would al-Qaeda target Ailes? He’s playing a huge role in making sure that the reactions they wanted to happen continue to happen.

Continued hysterical reactions? Check.
Never-ending over-commitment of the military? Check.
Economic self-destruction? Check.
Abandonment of civil rights and the commitment to the common good that made the US great? Check.
Poisoning the imperfect but generally positive international opinion of the US? Check.

I think it’s important to make clear that the hate produces the paranoia, and not the other way around.

Of course, there are many bigots who don’t have the slightest fear of those they hold prejudice toward, and there are those whose prejudice has its origins in a different sort of fear …

A fear that the wealth and power they’ve accumulated at the expense of “the other” (and class and gender as well as race, religion and sexual orientation can define that term) will one day slip from their grasp as the consequence of justice finally having been done through those despised “inferiors”‘ determined efforts.

And it’s the job of those who give a rat’s ass about justice to help make those fears all too real, isn’t it?

Fox News not only spreads irrational fear of Muslims and Gays, it also has pushed egregious lies that have had wide reaching consequences on public opinion and public policy. I document some of the biggest lies fox has pushed over the past two years.

This is why the USA is so freakin’ great, the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment totally protects the Free Speech of paranoiac, bigoted, fascistic lying-propaganda-pushing capitalist media moguls like Ailes and his Fox “News” travesty.

First, any story that begins with “According to Tim Dickinson’s new piece in Rolling Stone” is about as legitimate a news story as “Today the Ku Klux Klan journal reported President Obama…” Understand, anything Rolling Stone reports has a 99% chance of being some left wing, decadent socially manipulative piece of trash. Just like MTV, years ago it abandoned it’s musical focus for garbage clinging to the lowest edges of social acceptance.

Secondly, the predecessor story to this http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/05/24/behind-the-scenes-at-fox-is-like-in-front-of-the-scenes/ attempts to parade Fox as being illegitimate because of their “obvious on-air slant” Is Fox news politically slanted? Of course. But certainly not nearly as slanted as MSNBC, CNN, NPR or a dozen other so called legitimate ‘news’ sources. My single biggest issue with the liberal media today is how bigoted it is. The reason I call them bigoted is because they attempt to smear anyone or thing that isn’t socialist leaning by falsely painting them as racist.

– Don’t believe in gay marriage? You’re a bigot. – Don’t support Obama? you’re a racist. – you shouted “kill the bill” at a black congressman? You’re a KKK member.

Neither this nor the predecessor story names a single thing Fox News reports that is anti gay or anti Muslim. No one commenting on this story did nor can give examples to substantiate any hatred from Fox News. It’s just like when Bigot and TN Rep. Steve Cohen said “A big lie, just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie and eventually people believe it,” Small minded, moronic liberals, what’s left of them, run around making jokes and smearing Fox News as spreading hate when they don’t even watch it and can’t give a single example without selective quoting or downright lies.

If FAIR really wants to attempt to report with fairness and accuracy, this is the kind of garbage it needs to pass by. We have extraordinary problems in this country from 9% unemployment to $4.00 gasoline to a president blatantly breaking the law with an illegal war in Libya and killing women and children in the name of protecting innocent people. A Rolling Stone hit piece on Fox News is just garbage.